Transcript
Introduction
In the American cable industry, one man has, over the last several years, seized monopoly power. Using bully boy tactics and strong arming competitors, suppliers, and customers, that man has inflicted antitrust injury on my company and virtually every American consumer of cable services and technologies. That man is John C. Malone. Malone seeks to exert monopoly power over key stages of the delivery of cable programming to the American consumer. Control over the creation of programming and studios. Control over cable programming services. Control over the mechanics of transmitting programming by satellite. And control over the delivery of programming to the home. At every stage in this process, the consumer has paid and will continue to pay a monopoly tax to John Malone.
That was an excerpt from a lawsuit that Malone's one-time rival, Summer Redstone, filed and it is found in the book I'm going to talk to you about today, which is Cable Cowboy: John Malone in the Rise of the Modern Cable Business, and it was written by Mark Robichaux. So before I go to the actual book, I want to read some highlights from this fantastic Twitter thread written by this anonymous account called @loadlinefinance. It was written a few years ago and I think it gives a fantastic overview of John Malone's philosophy on company building. And I think knowing this before we go into some of the highlights, it'll actually enhance your understanding of the highlights as we go through.